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Hashed Mutton

A stew of cold mutton pieces, vegetables, and gravy served over buttered toast.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Carrot and turnip match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,002 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Hashed Mutton

Ingredients

Directions

Make the gravy

  1. Season the cold mutton pieces with pepper and salt.

  2. Place the bones and trimmings in a saucepan, cover with water, and add sliced onions.

  3. Stew until a good gravy is formed.

  4. Skim the gravy and strain it into a stew-pan.

Cook the hash

  1. Add the mutton.

  2. Add sliced carrots, turnips, potatoes, and onions to the meat and gravy.

  3. Set the pan over hot coals and simmer until the meat is warmed through, avoiding boiling.

Serve

  1. Cover the bottom of a dish with slices of buttered toast.

  2. Layer the meat and vegetables on top.

  3. Pour the gravy over them.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Onion + potatotop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,023 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  3. Carrot + potatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,107 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isobutyl-3-methoxypyrazine (green bell pepper, earthy).

  4. Onion + turniptop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Pepper + carrottop 6% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,555 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Lean cold mutton
Provides the main meat, which is already cooked and only needs gentle warming.
Bones and trimmings from mutton
Release collagen and flavor into the water, giving the gravy body and richness.
Potatoes
Starch that thickens the hash and gives it a soft, hearty body.
Carrots
Add natural sweetness and color as they soften in the gravy.
Buttered toast
Soaks up the gravy at the base, giving a soft, flavorful bed for the hash.

The step that matters

Simmer gently without boiling. The mutton is already cooked, so it only needs warming. Boiling toughens meat proteins and can make the gravy cloudy and the meat dry and stringy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (mutton, pepper, carrot, turnip, potato):

  1. Leekfits better
  2. Parsnipfits better
  3. Spinachfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against mutton, pepper, carrot, turnip, potato. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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